Notion is launching the third app in its suite of labor instruments, an e mail app known as Notion Mail. (The opposite two, after all, are Notion Calendar and Notion itself.) The app, accessible now for net and Mac and in testing for iOS, is the following step in Notion’s try and compete with Microsoft Workplace and Google Workspace. Notion needs to be the hub for all of your work, and it is aware of meaning getting e mail proper.
I’ve been testing Notion Mail for the previous couple of days, and the app is roughly what I anticipated to this point. It appears to be like good, buying and selling Gmail’s numerous menus and inscrutable buttons for a easy, text-first look. It’s very customizable, too: you’ll be able to change what seems in your inbox and in what order, present roughly data with every message, toggle darkish and lightweight mode, and extra. “We’re fascinated by it from a Notion perspective,” says Jason Ginsberg, one of many leaders on the Notion Mail staff. (Ginsberg and Andrew Milich based a productiveness instruments firm known as Skiff, which was acquired by Notion final 12 months.)
One among Notion Mail’s strongest options is its AI-powered group. If you arrange the app, it asks whether or not you’d prefer to routinely type issues like promotional emails or calendar invitations into their very own part. Helpful, definitely, however to this point so Gmail. If you open an e mail, although, a button seems on the prime of the thread prompting you to “auto label comparable.” If you happen to click on it, Notion’s AI will crawl by your inbox in search of different messages prefer it — not simply matching sender or topic line, however by really figuring out what’s within the e mail and what you would possibly care about. You can too create a label with a chatbot-style immediate. Both method, the app presents you with some guesses, and also you decide which of them ought to and shouldn’t be labeled collectively together with your present thread. From then on, any new e mail that matches the class will get labeled routinely.
The AI labeler isn’t good, but it surely’s very useful. I clicked the button on an e mail containing a receipt, and Notion Mail went and located a bunch of different receipts to label as properly. (It additionally discovered a few unrelated emails from Chase and eBay, however these have been simple sufficient to show off.) As soon as I hit save, I used to be offered with a brand new “Cost Receipt” part in Notion Mail displaying all my receipts. Properly, not all: there’s no apparent method to return in time and comb by all the things, so now I’ve a whopping two days of receipts collated collectively.
Notion calls these separate sections “Views,” and so they’re one of many extra highly effective elements of Notion Mail. “Consider every view as a group of filters,” Milich says, “you could mix nevertheless you need.” You possibly can have one that mixes all of your affirmation emails and receipts in a single mega-travel area. You possibly can have one view for all of your newsletters, and one other simply in your must-reads. These views sync again to the Gmail interface as labels, and so they don’t mess with the sanctity of your inbox, however they do provide a brand new technique to put issues collectively. It’s slightly like the thought behind Google Inbox, however a lot much less in your face.
As you begin to use the app, you begin to uncover extra of Notion Mail’s options. (One gripe I’ve with the app to this point: it hides numerous what it will possibly do, arguably for too lengthy, within the identify of easy design.) You should use Notion-style slash instructions to format textual content, but additionally to insert a built-in scheduling software related to your calendar, or a template that may routinely add data like a Zoom hyperlink or your recipient’s first identify. Notion’s AI may even write and edit your emails, should you like. You will discover most issues with a CMD-Okay shortcut to deliver up the command bar, however lots of them are fairly hidden in any other case.
There are some bugs and lacking options on this first model. It solely works with Gmail accounts, for one factor, and Milich wouldn’t give me a date for Outlook or different account assist. It’s additionally lacking Home windows and all cell platforms — there’s an iOS app coming quickly, it seems, however the remaining are prone to be additional behind. Even past all that, I want Notion Mail would allow you to see a number of mail accounts directly; switching between them is simply annoying. I’ve seen others report attachments behaving surprisingly or disappearing altogether, although I haven’t had that subject myself.
Normally, the app makes good sense for Notion. The thought, Milich says, was to “reinvent the core thought of the inbox. It’s not this endless checklist. It’s a database you’ll be able to filter, type, set up, within the Notion building-block mannequin. It’s like an app you’ll be able to customise.” It’s not a whole reinvention of the entire e mail system, only a bunch of recent methods to work together with and make sense of all the things in that system. That concept has labored awfully properly for Notion as an entire, and works for my inbox to this point too.
